27 April- the Orthodox Easter in Romania May 1, 2008

This year, we celebrated Easter much more later than the Catholic people.

At Easter, we usually go to church at midnight to bring light home. In our region, people usually bring to church a basket full of small pieces of food that they’ve prepared at home for Easter. They also cook “pasca”-Easter sweet bread-for this occasion. The priest will bless all the food during the liturgy and only after that, in the morning, people will eat from it.

During the liturgy, all the people sing an Easter traditional song called “Hristos a inviat din morti” (“Christ is risen from the dead”). You can listen to it below.

For Easter, the tradition is that every family have to have painted eggs, red especially, but also blue, yellow, green, etc.

They usually knock the eggs before eating them, and this happens in twos. One person says “Hristos a inviat” (“Crist is risen”) and knocks the other person’s egg and the other replies “Adevarat c-a inviat!” (“Indeed, Christ is risen!”) and does the same thing. The one whose egg is cracked will have to eat it (first).

For the next 40 days people will greet each other using these words: “Hristos a inviat!”, “Adevarat c-a inviat!”, but it is not compulsory.

Here are photos of the Eastern exhibition in our school.

Liliana&the kids

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7 Responses to “27 April- the Orthodox Easter in Romania”

Your Easter celebrations are quite similiar to ours, in our town ,during the Easter night, the priest bless water and fire and our “piccillate”, too! Afterwards he gives people are in the church a piece of that . I enjoyed very much the slide with your pictures and your Easter basket : very nice and full of co.lours!
Bye and as you say :“Hristos a inviat!”, !
Gina

The Romanian Peasant’s Museum is one of the most famous museums in Bucharest and it is located on Soseaua Kiseleff (Kiseleff Road), near Piata Victoriei (Victory Square). It has over 100 000 objects, including icons, ceramics, textiles and other exhibits representing the Romanain peasant’s life.
Every year, the last week-end before Easter, when we celebrate The Palm Sunday or The Arrival of Jesus in Jerusalem, craftsmen from different parts of the country take part in the fair before Easter, in the yard of the museum.
It took place this year, too, and there were more visitors than ever before. There were people from about twenty counties, such as Suceava, Iasi, Gorj, Maramures, Prahova, Alba, Arad and also Bucharest.
The fair opened on Friday, at ten o’clock, when the participants brought shells, traditional blouses, scarfs and sandals, icons, vases carved in wood, platters, knittings and traditional masks that were used in the ancient times for different observances.
There was also a market with different types of plants which make great medicines, honey, flowers and willow branches. In another corner of the yard, some people sold beer, apple juice and a traditional alcoholic drink, made of plums called “tuica” and also freshly grilled fish. Finally, what is the most important thing, they also sold manually painted eggs, that are the symbol of the Easter holiday.
All in all, the things that I liked most were some little statues carved in wood that represented characters from Ion Creanga’s marvelous creation: „Amintiri din Copilarie”(Recollections from Childhood). Ion Creanga is one of he greatest all-time Romanian writers and his book reflects aspects from the life of the Romanian children in the countryside in the 19th century.
The museum will host many other fairs connected to Romanian holidays and traditions, a very important one will be near Midsummer Day. I’m inviting you all there!
Irina

I really enjoyed listening to this beautiful hymn. I find it very interesting that the dates for Easter are different in the different churches. I read somewhere that they are trying to get agreement on having the same date for Easter. Does this mean that you are now on Easter holidays? Our school in Ireland is closed for this week for a mid term break but this does not happen every year. Only this year because our Easter was so early.
Tom